Friday, February 4, 2011

Police Reports In Assange Rape Case Leaked To The Internet : Pictures

More documents from the investigation by Swedish authorities into allegations of rape and sexual molestation perpetrated by Julian Assange against two Swedish women have leaked onto the internet.

Information about the investigation, including 68 pages to the British media, were previously leaked, and now, documents that appear to be pretrial discovery material that last year prosecutors had given to Björn Hurtig, Assange’s Stockholm lawyer, which he then faxed to the office of Mark Stephens, Assange’s British attorney.
The documents were anonymously posted to the Adobe Acrobat file sharing and collaboration site on January 27. They have a Nov. 23 cover letter addressed to Stephens’ co-counsel, in which Hurtig advises: “Please note that the documents are legally privileged information for Mr Julian Assange and nobody else.”

The 100-page fax contains Swedish police interviews with Assange's accusers Sofia Wilen, referred to as “Miss W.” and Anna Ardin, referred to as “Miss A.”, Assange himself, and other witnesses.

The documents show that within minutes of Wilen and Ardin reporting Assange for rape and sexual molestation, and before they had even been fully questioned by police, Assange was arrested in absentia. Many of the interviews were only written down and not recorded. The inspector who questioned Wilen was even locked out of her original interrogation notes and was told by her superior to "create and sign" a new interview document with unspecified "necessary changes".

Ardin and the police inspector who interviewed Wilen are both politically active in the Swedish Social Democratic Party, and the inspector is even listed as a friend of Ardin's on Facebook.

The documents also show that even though Swedish chief prosecutor Eva Finne decided there was no rape and revoked the warrant for his arrest, the police continued to investigate Assange and interview witnesses for months.

A witness, questioned in September, said that Ardin had told him that she sat in on the interview with Wilen and helped "make her case stronger" by adding an unspecified sentence to Wilen's statement.

Ardin told police that Assange had stayed in her flat in Stockholm for a week and that her consensual experience with Assange became violent when he pinned her to the bed as she tried to reach for a condom. She then said he released her and agreed to wear the condom but did something to it that caused it to rip and resumed having sex with her.

Wilen told police she had consensual sex with Assange using a condom and that later, as they slept, Assange began having sex with her while she was asleep. Wilen's encounter is the basis of the rape allegation.

According to her police statement, she woke up and asked,

“Are you wearing anything?”

“You,” Assange replied.

“You’d better not have HIV,” she said.

“Of course not.”

The police said “she felt it was too late” to stop the unprotected sex. “He [Assange] was already inside her and she let him continue. She couldn’t be bothered to tell him again. She had nagged about condoms all night. She had never had unprotected sex before. He said he wanted to come inside her, he didn’t say when he did, but he did it.”

After failing to persuade Assange to take an HIV test the women met and went to the police to file charges.

According to the the leaked documents Mr Assange appears to have stayed with both of his accusers for days after the alleged rape and molestation took place. The women paid for his transportation costs, cooked meals for him and washed his clothes before reporting him to the police.

The fax also contains a forensic report on the condoms Assange is supposed to have worn during the sex with the two women. Ardin accuses Assange of tearing the condom he wore with her intentionally. The two women kept their respective condoms for days, in Ardin's case for a week, before bringing them to the police. The forensic testing shows no DNA in Ardin's condom, but found "male" DNA in Wilen's condom.

The report doesn't say who the "male" DNA found in Wilen's condoms belongs to and no additional forensic testing appears to have been done. Wilen voluntarily underwent a full rape-kit test at a hospital, and was given anti-HIV medication. There are no results from the rape kit or any other medical reports on the two women included in the leaked documents.

According to Juha Saarinen writing for Wired.com, the documents' most explosive allegations were already reported in late December by The Guardian. Saarinen writes:

The file relates how Assange’s separate sexual encounters with two women in Sweden last year led to the criminal investigation, telling the story through police interviews with the two alleged victims, and with friends to whom they’d confided. There is nothing in the extensive details to support Assange’s past assertions that the Swedish criminal probe is part of [a] “dirty tricks” campaign against WikiLeaks.

Even though Swedish law is very strict about confidentiality and name suppression in sex crime investigations, Assange was named immediately as a suspect and had his picture sent out to the media.

Assange has not been charged in Sweden with any crime, and has denied doing anything wrong with the two women. Stephens has argued that Swedish prosecutors are abusing the British and Swedish legal process by trying to extradite Assange for alleged offenses that are not even extraditable. A two-day hearing is set for Feb. 7 and 8 in London and should decide if Assange will be extradited to Sweden or not.